Red
by ToTheEndsOfTheEarth12369
Summary: The world is on the edge of collapse. You hold on tightly to the string that holds you up, dangling, a kaleidoscope of memories pushing you down. And like all nightmares, you fall.
1. Blood

**All rights to their owners**

Gotham is dirty.

Fog, a fog that lifts up bits of dust to make a grainy film in the air, so every breath feels like inhaling the cement. Heavy smoke wafts from all available mouths, grotesque figures that resemble the people who smoke them. (Not all those chemicals are safe, no, some of them can knock a full grown man flat on his back, stunned) the buildings are brick, rough to the touch, identical. Most all the buildings in this endless maze of storage factories and skyscrapers are thus identical, so that it's hard to find your way unless you know where you're going.

(Most people don't. They drift and get lost and are found in roads and alleyways and cracks, barely comprehending where they are going, and always, always, ending up where they do not belong. Shades in the clothing of sheep, practically waiting for a wolf)

Only in Gotham would you find the tip of a steeple next to the local sex shop. Long abandoned, flagged with broken beams eaten by termites, the church is tucked into a tenebrous corner, practically black against the neon pink of the sex shop. Yet it possesses the same demons. Left solidarity, it stands now without the spirit that once adorned its features, cast aside by the holy to plague upon the unrighteous.

But none of the windows are broken, there is not a single shattered price of glass, not from a bottle or otherwise, on the steps. Teenagers kept long away from its entrance due to the threat of ghosts and curses, demons and monsters and saints that are likely to appear in the upper windows. Despite the covert activities happening in the neighboring sex shop, the church remind untouched and unattended and eventually faded from the minds of mere mortal men, shifting into the very brick, dislodged from society due to fear. But I'm not fooled. The only demons and monsters and saints that live here are those that trample on the gentle grounds between the chapel and the scared neon lights. There are no such things as ghosts

I push open the church door. Heavy and oaken, alive with termites, and yet it swings open kindly. The large, open room is littered with debris from an ancient cave in, beams and roof tiles and pews broken. The alter still stands, a beautiful stain glass window perched over it of the Virgin Mary, reds and blues and yellows and purples and golds all filter through the film and the lingering dust and the caved in roof with the moon shining beautiful overhead.

(Some sights are to beautiful to describe)

I move towards the door at the right side of the expanse, around broken beams that haven't moved since Gotham overweighed its roof with the sorrows of the poor districts. Nothing has been stored here in years. There is no second level for ghosts to even stand on to perk through the upper windows and I feel reassured at that fact. I feel reassured in the presence of this temple. No matter the brokenness of it all.

The little hall behind the sanctuary brings me to a half open metal door. The darkness outside is created by the buildings; they would be open to the moon if not for the odd angle. And the colors of spray paint are the only thing I can see, illuminated by the pink neon lights. This was supposed to be a garden for the church. Now it's a graveyard.

The seller is standing in the darkness. I can see him, but only slightly. In reality I know he's there because I can hear his foot tap impatiently against the cement.

"Are you Vet?"

He starts. He has been watching down the alleyway, waiting for me at the cusp of the sex shop, and he whirls in search of me. I might have laughed, but in the presence of the church, I feel it impertinent to laugh at others stupidity. So I settle on smiling. It's not as bad, at least.

When the man's eyes fall on me, I make my way into the moonlight just before the shadows, and still I can see his eyes highlighted in the neon. A mouse of a man. Drugs and toxins have thinned him into a nearly gender less pile of bones and dreadlocks. He wouldn't be missed if this transaction goes array. He's a low level man on his gangs totem pole, his tattooed gang sign isn't even at its final evolutionary stage.

This might even be his first assignment.

"You Johnny's girl?" His voice is shrill and cuts quick into the alley. I know now why he hasn't advanced on. He's loud.

"One of them," I settle on. I barely think about it anymore. Just to screw with them sometimes I make up names and scenarios and add in little comments about just how many 'girls' that John really has.

"Good," he says. He lugs a large duffle-bag onto the ground and shoves the thing a bit in front of him. He's obviously new at this. That's a very suspicious duffle-bag. "Do you have the money?"

Amateur, really, and I feel sorry for him. Armatures never last long. "Yeah," I pull the three bills out of my jacket pocket. Crumpled, completely not obvious. Unlike his own method of payment.

"Ok," I try not to laugh as he glances back and forth between us. How are you going to make a sell when you're so nervous? The cops or the bat can smell fear from miles and miles away.

But I've been watching. I haven't seen the bat or his boy in blue on this side of town for a full week, it's one of those times when the bat disappears for a few weeks for some unknown reason. Who knows. Sometimes you see him in some other city working with some other hero. He's probably got connections that no one would ever believe. But he always returns, with his Robin in toe. (Bats nest in packs, after all)

But the police are well enough. They keep the place safe just long enough for the bat to return. And I'm not willing to get arrested over a shabby gang banger trying to earn his first hit.

"Slide the bag over, and I'll toss the money at the same time."

The idiot doesn't even look suspicious. Doesn't even question that I can completely grab the bag and run, he'll never catch me if I snuck back through the church. But I'm already cheating him out of price (John never pays more than four hundred, and the seller never came with an upfront price. I never feel guilty) I have two more hundred dollar bills crumpled in my shoe, in my panties. John will be happy that I come back with extra money unspent and a full duffle bag of merchandise.

It's a win-win situation. I might as well go through with it. If he was asking for more than four hundred, I have to take and run. But I would leave a hundred, maybe, just for kicks and giggles.

"Right," the man says. He shuffles the bag forward with an audible screech, making me wince, and positions his foot above the bag, ready to push, "get ready now."

"Just shove it," I tell him. It's obvious this guy isn't from the slums originally because there's no accent but for the mild one all Gotham's residents tend to have. They roll their words out long, not just syllables, but every middle of the word seems to stretch on forever in their vocabulary. I'm not sure why this happens or whatever started it, I never picked the accent up, but in some ways, if not for being so American, it could sound British. "I'll throw."

The man nods. His foot shifts on the merchandise and I crumble the two bills together in a little ball to make throwing easier. When the man shoves the duffle bag over, screeching across the cement of the alley floor, I toss the bills underhanded, not really caring if the man is going to catch them or not. I paid for what I needed. The rest is of no concern to me.

While the man fumbles for the bills, I bend down and grab the duffle bag, shifting it so that I can yank the zipper open. Dust and bits of powder fly up from the inside, as I catch in my sight just what I wanted. Pounds and pounds of Acid. Normal street price would come in as over ten thousand dollars for this one duffle bag, but John protects the slums on this side of town and in essence controls all the dealers within a ten mile radiance. He has been since before I could remember, and business for us has always been smooth. And when it's not…but it always is. I don't like to think of when the going gets rough. Because when the going gets rough, the rough shot someone.

But that hasn't happened in a long time. We operate outside Crime Ally and see less and less of the Bat as his attentions are pulled by men in penguin suits and clown makeup. And the very few people who get busted have never seen John anyway, so information is never slipped into unwelcomed hands. He isn't the Black Mask. He doesn't let himself be known to every hero in this place. That would be economic suicide.

And John is nothing if not an economic genius.

I dip my finger lightly in some of the brick sized bags and take a whiff. The smell is putrid, Acid made in home kitchens always has this smell, but they are always the strongest kind and their demand is high. But that's something I don't normally get involved with. I've never even seen a drug house, or where drugs are made. I just go and get them when I'm told to. I am, after all, Johnny's girl, and he likes his girls to stay clean.

But I know enough to tell a fake from the real deal. I've spent years on the streets, after all, and when you live here for that long you either die or pick up a few tricks.

The man has his bills, shifting through them, but the deal is made and he cannot go back on his word even if he is looking down unhappily at the amounts of money in his hands. I sling the bag over my shoulder and nod towards him, "Nice doing business," and the man isn't brave enough to stop me as I turn around and go back towards the church. The safest escape, considering how obvious this duffle bag is, would be the alley ways, but I don't want to duck down into that darkness until I'm sure that the man is gone. So I retreat back into the waiting arms of the church, feeling slightly more controlled now that I'm in here, feeling slightly more safe than being on the outside-

_-Bang!-_

My whole body vibrated with shock waves. I fall back against the wall, out of the light form the moon coming from the broken metal door, trying to calm my beating heart, _trying to calm my beating heart_, but it isn't working, not nearly like I want it to. How many times have I heard the explosion of a gun? And yet I face it now like a coward.

But the stillness, there is stillness. Just a slight scuffling of boots against the ground. The sound is all at once unsettling, all at once turns my stomach upside down. I try and gather the courage to look out the door, to glance out into the moonlight, no one would notice me there. Unless they had been watching the whole transaction. But I never knew of cops-or Bats- that blew the brains out of someone before even arresting them. But there could be a rival gang member out there, not even connected to the police. In which case, the silence would be homicide.

I glance out into the alley way from the crack between door and church wall. My eyes first linger on the bloody pool of skinny, haphazard limbs that the man named Vet lies in. Forever resting, forever still.

And then my eyes fall onto the body of a man, hovering over the man named Vet. The first thing I see is a skin tight helmet, the bloody red skin tight helmet, that conceals every bit of his face, his scalp, his neck, in that crimson color. He has on a leather jacket, a leather pant, a leather shirt, leather upon leather upon leather, of light brown and black. Layers and layers of muscles and secrets.

What I see last is the AK-47 positioned at his hip, and the pistol in his hand.

Who is he? An assassin? A death angel? A hero possessed by the helmet? I've run into so many heroes, so many villains, but none of them would shot a man on first sight, not only because Vet was low on the social order but also because getting information out of him would prove to be easy enough. Even I could have done it. Shooting him is unnessisarly. It has to be. I refuse to think otherwise. (But that's only the logical part of my brain. The illogical part of my brain is screaming, screaming, screaming. I've never seen murder. I've never come face to face with death. And I suppose whatever innocence I had is lost now. In some part of my illogical brain, I morn that death.)

I move backwards, carefully, the bag suddenly very heavy on my shoulder. I touch the wall behind me, I'm not stupid enough to forget it's there, but I do misjudge the distance. The slight _–crunch-_ that the bag makes against the wooden wall makes the helmet jerk, his hand leaps towards the pistol trigger, and I don't stay to watch what else.

I take off down the hall and twist into the sanctuary. My heavy breathing echoes, and I try to stifle that, but breathing is hard and I get light headed as I dive into the broken pews and nestle somewhere deep into the fallen beams.

I glance behind me and the ancient dust has been unsettled, and there are steps coming right towards the sanctuary. Not even fast, slow, slow, and the panic is more than I can take, more than I really needs, so I kick the beam above me, causing a small land slide of crashing beams, a giant collision that sends vile amounts of dust crumbling down in folds like silk. I clutch the bag and settle into my hiding place, in a very dark spot, a bright obscurity behind piles of beams.

_-Creak-_…_-creak-_…_-creak-_

I don't move. Don't breath. It feels like suffocating. The bright moon overhead makes the ground under the beams shine silver, piles and piles of grungy smelling dirt. The dilapidated beams are groaning as they bend, as the boots stop, as I watch them shift, leaning against the beams near me. They scrape, scrape, against each other.

_-Creak-_…_-Creak-_…_-Creak-_

The boots stop right before my eyes, close enough for me to touch, to smell the thin veneer coating the surface. They aren't new boots, but they have to be expensive. The street girl in me points out the various buckles and tries to put them to a brand, because those things are worth money, but everything else is trying to calm my breathing. And yet, with all the adrenaline, I feel almost tranquil.

"come out little kitty," the voice is disoriented, perhaps by the mask, a voice that sounds like a strange half man, half beast, "Come out, come out, where ever you are!"

_-Are! Are! Are! Are!- _echoes above us and out into the Gotham sky. I move as it echoes, a rule that was taught to me at some point in time that I don't really remember. Always move when there are sounds, because those sounds mask your own movements. The bag is held tight against my chest. My feet move slowly, softly, over the dust. The only escape I have is out a termite made hole in the wall not two feet from me, but two feet now is like ten miles.

Each movement is only made when the man in the red helmet moves. I'm crouched down on my toes, clutching the bag, moving carefully inch by pain staking inch towards the hole, towards that freedom. Crawling on my knees, closer and closer.

"I'm not gunna hurt you. I just need to know who you work for."

_-For! For! For! For!-_

(I'm not tense. I recognize the fear, and I recognize the danger. Now I use that. No, I am calm. I only breathe in the dust. I only make patterns in the dirt. Those are the only things that connect me to earth. Otherwise, I do not even exist at all.)

I reach the hole, termites rushing back and forth in the moon light and I pretend not to care as I shove the bag out into the very tiny channel between sex shop and church. Ignoring the grimy texture of the eaten plywood, the crawling creatures across my skin, I shimmy myself out of the church and onto the ground, glancing up at the bright, bright moon, a thin sliver of silver filtering down on the wet, moldy ground. (The moon has never looked so beautiful.)

I don't take my time lying there. I move out into the open street, devote of cars and sound because for some stupid reason everything is so silent, and make my way towards the front of the sex shop. Behind me, gun shots go off within the church, ringing out to heaven, reflecting back on my ears to sound like small bombs. Perhaps that's what they are after all.

_-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-_

I slip into the sex shop. The Neon lights are Korean characters, the whole of the interior flooded in pink, from the vinyl couches to the shiny poles littering the tops of the counters. Rows and rows of merchandise are stalked on either side of the rooms, the middle open with moving bodies and sounds and screeches-

-I duck behind the counters where the register is, only catching sight of bedazzled cowgirl boots resting stunned at the pole, the Korean girl standing behind in a tube top and shorts, holding onto her neck like a rope would tie around a suicidal teenager, because to me she looks so very, painfully numb. I settle back against the plastic of the counter, the bag resting under me as I sit on it, watching the TV up above depict some kind of unsightly position for a man to be in. I close my eyes. There is nothing here I wish to see.

(I've never been in a sex shop, but I remember one as if I had. I remember something akin to this place, and to me, that makes being here painful. But it's safe. I just have to keep telling myself that. Safe, safe, safe…)

"The hell was that?" a man asks somewhere. The room has gone silent, listening to the gunshots, listening to the intense yelling of a man all alone in a church, screaming insanely at the sky while trying to find a girl that is no longer there. (I find it ironic that this one thing is enough to stop the activities inside, even more than the government that tries to shut down the place time and again, never succeeding. Perhaps they should get someone with a gun to come next door to really chase them out. People will, without fail, always run from a gun.)

_-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-_

…..

The winding alley takes me to a door. It's not a great looking door (what doors in Gotham are?), the paint on the rough wooden surface has been chipping away since I first set my eyes on it, tucked away under a metal staircase of an identical brick building. The dumpster down the way form here has a smell nastier than the thick smell of smoke form the men gathered around a flaming barrel in the middle of the four way intersection in front of this alleyway (the ones who are lost converge there, like streams searching for the ocean, exchanging company and information).

I knock again. Sometimes it takes more than one knock for the door to open, and I'm never allowed to open it myself, when coming in. Going out is a different story. (Going out is always a different story. Out, is always a painful word. A sad and lonely word.)

It doesn't take long for the door to scream open on its hinges. It never opens nicely, and the one to open it never opens it nicely to begin with, so I assume that the door likes taking revenge on its keeper. The door keeper herself has never been one for subtlety and therefore I think she and the door have very much in common.

"What de hell are you doin here? You 'ave an hour before you need to be back, can't you take yourself somewhere else?"

LaDasha has her hands settled on her hips (never a good sign), her mass of bangles making no noise where they have settled unlike normally when they play with her mass of dreadlocks. Thick, heavy makeup has been applied recently over her dark face; I can tell by the way she holds herself. She is always more confident with makeup on, covering her imperfections, but I think she has none. Every part of LaDasha is beautiful.

"Let me in," I tell her.

"'onestly, when are you ever goin to have fun? There a whole lot to do when you are young!" I move past LaDasha and into the apartment. The thick smell of incense and herbs hit me, heavily. The lighting is dimmed and the glittering beads and symbols hanging from the doorway and ceiling have no apparent shine. Years and years of thick smells have rotted off most of the mustard yellow wall paper, and what isn't rotted is peeling in thick layers like shedding skin. "When I was your age…"

When LaDasha was my age she was on a boat from Jamaica to Gotham city. She's not that much of an old woman, she's just sentimental.

Murmuring comes from further down the hallway. Painted peace signs, woven tapestries and pillows, burning sticks of lavender and thyme settle like always, but the unnatural quiet that is only broken by the murmurs is unsettling. LaDasha has no records playing today, no low jazz or strange Buddhist hymens are playing as background music. There are no customers in the shop that bring conversation through the walls. Everything is still and only broken by LaDasha's smooth Jamaican accent.

John has company over.

LaDasha disappears behind another row of beads and brings her one sided conversation with her. I debate on not continuing down the hallway towards the living room, but the heaviness of the duffle bag makes me venture further down the hallway. Whoever it is knows, probably, that one of Johnny's girls would be present for almost everything that he does. It wouldn't be unusual or unwelcomed for me to show up.

So I continue down. Past the wall shrine to Bob Marley that LaDasha insists on hanging there is the open space of the living room, the stuffy place full of pillows and hookah pins and old wooden furniture stalked on top of each other to form a makeshift TV stand where John spends most of his time. He is there now, sitting back with his feet up as if the place is his office desk, and in a way I suppose it is.

(This is where John does business. This is where he smokes his cigarettes, cleans his guns, has sex with his wife. The TV stand is where his life revolves, because in the end…)

At the other end of the room is a man sitting up rigidly on the pillows. One hand is gripping his knee with a nervous force, his other fiddling with the butt of a smoke. I know the look of him; Italian by nature and personality and name, but the thick smog from the burning incense clouds my eyes and blocks him from sight. But I see him wave a hand, so I wave back, more concerned with trying to decode the look on John's face. "Hey there, honey. Picked up a good shipment, huh?"

"This time," I tell him. I recognize the voice. One of the informers form the district left of us, controlled by some freelancing drug group that has been causing us some trouble. I'm not sure what that trouble is.

"Business is no good baby," he says, shaking his head. I have no name to put with his face as of yet, but informants come and go so fast I never get anyone's name. "One shit hole right after the other, you know? Good thing one of John's girls can make a good transaction."

(…Johnny only has two girls he enjoys. One of them is his wife…)

"I betta not see you smokin in there!" LaDasha storms into the room from the second entrance to the kitchen at the right of the hallway, two coffee mugs held tightly in her fists, "you know I don like you smokin, Johnny."

"Shut up, Dash," John says back.

"Don tell me ta shut up," LaDasha spits back, "The girl is back."

(…And the other is me.)

"What's the damage?" John asks me, not looking at me, but tracing the edges of his wife's long scarves as she trails away from him. The informer glances over at me form over his own smoke. I still can't see his face.

"Three hundred in the hole, two hundred in the bank," I tell him, taking out the two stashed bills from my hiding places and tossing them over to John, but they get caught in the air and falter before they reach him. John smiles, laughs, and I shove the duffle bag over the torn vinyl floor towards him. "I don't know how much is there, but it's a heavy bastard."

John sits up and rips open the zipper, sending powder and narcotics flinging into the heavy atmosphere. LaDasha sticks a long painted fingernail into a bag and smells the tip. "Acid, 80% pure grade." John hums, approvingly, as he dabs the powder under his nose. His large fingers are connected to his large hand connected to a large arm connected to a large body. John is just large, broad and tall, but in spirit, in personality, he is quiet. Hard to please, even harder to get away form. His reputation, as far as I'm aware, perceives him as such. I know a different sort of man. "You see this Carlo?"

"Yeah, I see it," the bag is shoved over to the other side of the room though; right to Carlo the informer sitting on the pillows ridged.

"That's my business, Carlo. This is my work, this is my life. I distribute. I sell. I buy. So that people like you, don't have to. Wouldn't you say that's important?"

"A course, man," Carlo says, "a course it's important-"

"-Then why is it, Carlo, that you have nothing good to come back and tell me? Do I not keep the whole of these streets safe? Am I not the bat in black, without the mask? This black ass keeps all you other asses in place so the real bat doesn't come drag you to jail. You know how close this place was to becoming the second crime alley? And what did I do?"

"That's not what I'm saying, man!" Carlo is standing in a minute, defensive, his arms flailing around him. (I'm not sure what kind of meeting this is, but LaDasha disappears into the kitchens and she normally stays when information is concerned. She is, after all, an information hub.) "I'm just saying, weird shit has been happening! People disappearing, people killed, cargo gone missing from the port ships-"

"-I'm not concerned what goes missing," John says easily.

"You don't know," Carlo falls back on the pillows, and I cross over to where John is, picking up the fallen hundred dollar bills as I go, "Look, I'm in the business of information. I swore to you a long time ago that I would protect your interests in all other places I could waddle my way into. We tight, have been for a long time. We practically started this business together."

"I'm well aware," John says, in that quiet way he does. (John hardly ever raises his voice. It only goes very, very low.)

"Then you know I wouldn't lie to you," Carlo says.

(I wonder if all that was true. I've never seen Carlo here before; then again there is a whole life that I don't know John participates in and a whole world that he hides. There are very few spaces that anyone fits into John's life, and very few big enough for constant contact.)

"Look, Johnny, things are stirring. Guys are disappearing left and right, showing up dead in some gutter not long after. Some of them are friend's man. Some of them work for you. Black Mask has his fuckers running riots all over north side, right in Bird territory. He's up to something, everyone's up to something."

"I tell you time and again, Carlo," John speaks and pools his arm around my waist, laying a kiss at the jacket. "We aren't interested in where the big fish are swimming up. We swim downstream. We work under their radar. So long as my transactions are going smoothly, and everything's calm in the four blocks we own, then everything's a-ok. Don't you worry your pretty head about Black Mask."

(I think of the man in the red helmet. I think of the sex shop and the church and the paradox, a foot of space that separates between the two, as the gunshots ring against the night sky.)

"Fine then," Carlo answers after a moment's thought, "but you know, when someone else turns up dead the police will turn their eyes towards this district."

"It'll be old news by then," John says offhandedly, "And if what you're saying about Black Mask is true, then the police will be to busy to notice the murders of a horde of drug addicts and prostitutes. Did you say north side?"

"North side,"

"What about the east?"

"You mean Bludhaven?" Carlo asks. "Nah, nothing much has been happening in Bludhaven. You know, the bat left his lackey in charge. The boy in blue has been keeping good tabs of his portion of the city. Nothing happening on the west side either. But south side has a new upstart causing some problems."

"Now we're down to business," John says. Because if there's anything that John Wilder knows, it's his business. He knows more business than a street kid knows survival. He thrives on it, builds himself up and around it, so that he and his business are intricately braided together with no room in-between for anything or anyone else. "You're supposed to be keeping an eye out on the Italian district."

"I've been doing that," Carlo says, putting out his cigarette on the ashtray besides him. (The only one here not allowed to smoke is John), "With all the Black Mask nonsense everything in my sector seems pretty normal, you know."

"Then why are you here?"

"There's a new kid on the block I thought you would like to hear about," Carlo says, "And besides, like I said, we have issues with disappearances. And they ain't from this new kid coming up. I hear there's a new vigilante running amuck in a red mask, not sure of that's connected to the disappearances though."

(I keep my mouth shut firmly. There are some things I don't want to relive.)

"Who's the kid, Carlo?"

(John sounds tired, and I suppose he would be. I would be tired too, if I really didn't care if people die spontaneously or not. And if I really think about it, I' not sure why it matters to me to hear more about the red helmet man. I'm not sure why it matters. Besides, there could be no connection. The man I saw has a red helmet, and the man Carlo describes has a red mask. In Gotham, those can mean two very different things.)

"His name's Galante," Carlo says, fiddling in his pocket for a cigarette. He offers one to John, but he doesn't take it. LaDasha sends him an approving look over her tea mug as she comes in, sitting down on the cap of john's knee. He rubs her back in circles, his fingers dipping into my sides. "He's running a pretty steady trade of Venom in the Italian sector, running straight down to the port. I've gathered that he has a steady trade in Bludhaven too, but I'm not sure what he is trading. It's rare that anything comes out of Bludhaven except for metal stuff these days, from the factories."

"He real'y worth keepin an eye out?" LaDasha asks.

"I would say so," Carlo leans forward, his eyes shining against the back drop of his body that has lost all rigidness. I suppose he is use to John now (A fatal mistake) "they say he has connection to Shark."

(The atmosphere in the room changes. It seems even the temperature drops. This happens every time that John doesn't want me to know something, every time he kicks me out of an important discussion. This happens whenever secrets are to close to being revealed, because in the end, what would be Gotham city if not filled with secrets?)

"Go upstairs," john pushes me in the direction of the door to the upstairs, not gently, but it's more so than he would have given anyone else.

But my curiosity gets the better of me. How many times have I just obeyed? How many times have I given into his word and never asked why I shouldn't know things? He allows LaDasha to know everything; she perhaps knows more about Gotham than john does. Its always been that way, I do the transactions while LaDasha manages to talk her way in and out of every portion of Gotham social circles, digging up information and dirt and dust form corners long since left unexplored. LaDasha explores them, forever an adventurer, forever none to gently forcing her way into places she shouldn't belong.

And I've always been content to sit back and allow them to do the hard parts. I allow them to do the worrying, the planning, the decision making, everything, because I'm not their age. They are older and wiser and should know these things. Always have known these things (John saved me from the streets, from the darkness, when I was left to rot, before him everything was a dark blur…) but now I feel myself old enough, I feel that I have a will and a right to express how I feel about certain things. And I want to know who Shark is.

"And do what?"

"Homework,"

"I don't have any,"

He looks at me. It's the first time in a long time that there was anything hostel behind those eyes. I believed, for a long time, that he really loved me. Not in the creepy way, because John is married, but like he was my father. He was always my father before he was my friend. I always believed that he was protecting me, helping me, because that's what he promised me that night we meet. That he would protect me. That I would never be alone.

(I regret it, sometimes. Sometimes, when John has people in the apartment, people who have voices like iron and knives that cut into soft flesh crudely, making jokes about children who buy off them and the sales they make under the table, I wish John had left me in the gutters to die. I wish I had enough sense to say no to him and his promises)

And the way he looks at me now is the same way he looks at me when I'm in trouble. When I was just a kid and did something wrong, he would grip me by the arm until it bruises and whisper in my ear in that low, deadly voice 'do not make me hurt you, kid, because you wouldn't like when I hurt you.' I feel like I need to protect my arm now, or else he will grab it and cause phantom bruises to sprout.

"Then find some to do," John says, "Make yourself useful."

I don't like making him angry. I glance over at Carlo and wonder if my newfound independence would be worth his wrath.

"Come, lovey," LaDasha says, running her hands over her skirts repeatedly. Nervously. John is gripping her forearm hard in his giant hands, "come up, wait for me."

I follow LaDasha's orders. I'm not sure what I'm even supposed to do anymore because going against John is new and strange to me. I'm not even sure what a rebellious person does. Do they get angry and defensive? Nervous and excited? I'm nowhere in the middle of those two. I feel ashamed for ever going against John. My savior. The man who put a roof over my head. Clothes on my back. Who taught me how to write in the kitchen. Who shakes me when I'm being foolish with his left hand and slaps me with his right.

(It's those things that I am afraid of. Afraid, and afraid, and afraid.)

I yank open the door to the stairs and mount the darkness of the hallway. The wall paper here is old enough to have seen deaths and births, old enough to peel without the interference of the burning fumes, and still be intact. An ugly green color, which makes the hallway even darker. At the top of the stairs is a small hallway that leads to the three rooms in the apartment, the one on the immediate left being my own.

I stop to consider spying on John and Carlo and LaDasha. I could do it, without them knowing, because I have spied before. But John is scary when angry and I've already set him off. His patience runs only as long as company lasts, and I'm not the only one to feel the effects of my mistakes. I don't want LaDasha to have to worry about me.

(I'm too much of a coward. But at least I can protect LaDasha)

I'm not allowed in any of the other rooms. I know one is John and LaDasha's room. The third room is at the end of the hallway, a looming door that I have always been wary about. It's always rubbed me the wrong way. John always insists that it's his armory, where he keeps his merchandise, jokingly referring to it as his own 'bat cave'. (I'm not that foolish though. LaDasha was pregnant once and the door was opened for long periods of time, giving me ability to peer into it and see the empty contents behind as the walls were painted. But when the baby died in her stomach, the door was closed, and never opened again.)

I go into my room. It's more like a long closet, really. A metal cot is set up next to the window, barred from the outside, with a small table where I keep my things. A few colored pencils, a book of crossword puzzles, a faded copy of Gone with the Wind, a coffee mug I stole while at the port form a drunk sailor. They are the only things that I own, have ever, besides a pair of pants and another t-shirt.

I throw myself onto the bed. I don't bother changing out of the sweatshirt and jean's I'm wearing because I want to be able to run when John divvies out his punishment. This place feels more like a jail now than a home, cold. Deprived.

The door opens. I'm expecting LaDasha, but instead I lift my head to see John. His features, large nose, thick jaw, cheekbones, are defined more with the shadows cast form light outside the window. He sits down on the edge of the bed, making the metal squeal under us.

"I'm going to tell you once, Red," John says, his voice low, low, deep enough to hurt, "You will do as I say. When we are alone, and especially when we have guests."

"I just-I thought that-"

"You _thought_," he puts emphasis on the word as if it disgusts him," You also _thought_ that it would be a good idea to go against my word when there was a guest. You thought that it would be a good idea to ignore me. do you know what that means, Red? Do you?"

"I-" I have no words to say. All he says is true.

"You?" John ask, "you're not dumb enough to answer in incomplete sentences. You know how I detest incomplete, mumbled sentences."

I hide my burning face in my pillow. "I saw it, John. I saw it. What Carlo was talking about, the man in the red helmet. The seller that i met today, for the Acid, I swear John this guy came out of nowhere, the guy in the red helmet shot that kid down without even blinking. He went after me…the church on North Haven. I…he…"

John isn't looking at me. He does it when processing information, looking off in the distance. Trying to connect bits and pieces of information. He doesn't look angry. He just looks cold.

"Why didn't you tell me this? It should have been the first thing you told me-"

"-I'm sorry. People get killed all the time; you say that all the time! I thought…well I didn't think anything of it until Carlo mentioned the man in the red mask and the deaths. I was going to tell you, I promise."

"Promises aren't good enough," John says, standing. "They never are."

I watch him watching me. he is so tall. he casts shadows over me, looming there, his hands balled to fists. (For a moment, I feel alone. Hated. Betrayed. Then that feeling, too, fades.)

"Put it from your mind," john tells me, "These things are none of your concern-"

"-but they should be!"

(I clamp my mouth and wish for better days. When the sun can shine though the Gotham fog. When the people get along no matter what part of the city they're from. When John can smile at LaDasha and they can be in love again. I wish for better days. But I know no days that have been like those. My days have always been dark.)

John whips his huge hand across my cheek with a terrible _–slap-_ sound. My head spins for a moment, ringing, leaving me stunned and dazed and hurt. Hurt because it's been a long time since I have enticed John to hurt me. He never does so without a reason. I feel slightly dejected just on the thought. I fear losing that little trust I had.

"I don't like to do this," John whispers, the lowest octave that his voice drops when he is angry. But it seems loud. Everyone always hears it, "You know I don't." he grabs my chin roughly, shaking me once, my world dazed, nothing but a yellow light and the dark around me changing in a kaleidoscope. "But I know I taught you from a pup to do as your elders tell you to do. I told you to forget about it. So forget."

"He died," I wail, "He died!"

(I'm not sure what I am expecting. in some part of myself, the small part that is still screaming form Vet's death, I foolishly think this is a ligament reason for him to how me mercy. I dumbly hold onto the idea that John will suddenly understand, suddenly come out of his old ways and create a new outlook on the situation. but he is cold, cold to the touch, and I remember, so clearly, other times when this has happened. when he kicks me in the stomach hard enough to break my ribs, leaving me bleeding on the kitchen floor, throwing a glass bottle against my temple, time and time again, until it leaves a thin scar that runs along the left side of my face. I remember his fist, coming down and down and down, I remember the cocked but of a gun breaking my knee cap in two. I've forgotten these things until now. or maybe I repressed them. Maybe they were to painful to bring to my mind.)

he shakes me. he shakes me and shakes me as if that will; bring forth what he wants from me...and the world spins, his form looming over me...changing...demonic...and I am afraid. shaking. And he is hissing like a snake, "Why are you concerned with the death of some pathetic seller? People die, Red. That's what they do. You're born, you work and you work and you work to get somewhere, and then you die. There isn't any other cycle. So you suddenly think you're tough because you've seen death? You don't know what death is."

(I do know what death is. I've seen it now, I feel as though I've seen it many times before. I feel as though I know it personally, an old friend always knocking at my door. It concerns me how John doesn't care. But hasn't he always been cruel?)

"You think you're tough," John says, letting me go. I feel the bruises pool before his hand ever leaves. his eyes burn, a cold type of burning. he is dry ice. his soul leaves burns where there was once frozen liquids. "I've raised you tough." He stops and seems to think, "I've raised you for real action. And if you seem to think your old enough now to handle talking back to me, then you can handle real action. How about it, Red? You ready for action?"

I'm afraid to nod. I'm afraid to shake my head. I'm afraid to even move, to breathe. He is so much bigger than me. I've never been in this much trouble. And I have a feeling that I wouldn't like the punishment. I don't want him to hurt me, I never wanted to be hurt.

"Do you know who Shark is? No, of course you don't. He's an arms dealer that works out of Arkham Asylum. That's all you need to know. I have no idea about those killings or the one you saw or the bastard in the red helmet, but what I do know is that none of these things influence our business unless it involves Shark."

"What…what if it involves Shark?"

"Then we track him down," John says, quietly, "And you know what we do then?"

I don't think I want to know.

"This world is more complicated than you like to give it credit for," John whispers. "This world is a horrible, dangerous place. People like us, we have to do things to protect our own assets. We have to do things we don't want to do."

"Let me do it," I tell him, "Let me go and find out what Shark knows."

"You don't even know where to start," John says.

"Arkham Asylum," I tell him, "Just like you said."

"That's a dumb ass idea from a child," John says. he looms over me now, looms, a mountain that I will never hope to overcome. I cannot climb to his peek because to much ice stands in the way, ice that if you slip on will leave you crashing down to sharp, pointed rocks. falling away form John, once you have started climbing, will only get you killed, "But I'll give you something else. This man in the red helmet. If you can find out who he is, then you can know more about our operations. But you have to figure out what red helmet wants first."

"Our operations?" I've never heard of an operation. I've never thought we did anything besides buy and sell. I thought that we controlled a few blocks of the city drug trade and nothing else. I thought these things and they seem stupid now. I feel stupid and childish and oddly stunned. "What operation, what are you talking about?"

"If you can find him, than we can exploit him," John says, "this is where you are naive. Listen to me carefully, Red. You are either the predator or the prey. And there is always more than one predator. Predators can feed off each other, making each other stronger, but it's in their best interest to secure a place at the top less they become prey. You exploit the other predators to get to the top. That's how to weed out the weak from the strong. We are the strong, Red, and they are the weak."

He stands, glancing out the window. With his black eyes off me I feel let lose form an impenetrable darkness, the blackness within his heart produces it. There's nothing there. There's no love and no compassion. I've seen the look before in drug addicts, but instead of insanity, there is only coldness.

(I'm not ignorant. I'm just afraid. I know what John can do. I've seen it. Even if I wanted to leave now I couldn't. because he is the only father I ever had, only mother I ever had, only family I ever had. I ever remember. And something tells me this is better than whatever other darkness was before. Before he found me. before, the time I cannot remember. Darkness, now. Like the darkness in his eyes. I'm not ignorant. I can see it. I'm just afraid.)

"The bat symbol is in the sky," John says quietly, musically, his voice taking a ride on the air around us like a wave. Beautiful, in some ways, deadly in all others. there is no middle man with John, he is always what you see and nothing else. the musical beauty there is only caused by his own sadism, "the Batman has returned to his nest."

He's been gone somewhere, for around three weeks. I'm not sure when exactly he went, but when the symbol stops appearing we know he's gone. That's when the Birds of Prey and Nightwing really go on the prowl. To keep the city together before it bursts. and when it expands, becoming to much for those few people to hold together, becomes to much for the police to deal with, the Bat comes back. Batman always comes back to his home. Staying away for to long will, after all, cause more hard than good. Even if we are in the business of harm. And even so, Batman keeps all others out of the business. he takes out the competition, destroys our rivals. we live in a one sided symbiosis with the Bat. We live in a world where feeding off each other is common place. (It's a dangerous game John plays. But John thrives on walking the line, teetering on thin ice, running from the bomb at the last second. I'm not sure his connections. I've never been sure and until now I've never wanted to ask. I've always been positive that John will come out of any situation with more than he when in with. but it's a dangerous game he plays. and only one party will come out victorious. the question is, who will win, and who will be sacrificed in getting there?)

"Batman is a predator," I tell him, "does that make him our enemy?"

"Yes," John says, his back to me as he watches something in the hallway, moving to stand in the door way, glancing back at me even if I cannot see his face in the shadows, "and like all enemy's, he is easily exploited."

When John leaves the room, I feel distinctly empty.


	2. Apple

**All rights to their original owners. **

My name is Red. It's the only name I have ever had. I'm not sure where it came from, where LaDasha even got it. But when she opened the screaming door to the apartment the day John took me home, she looked down and said 'now dat's one red child. Come in, Red.' And form that day on, I've been Red. It's strange how that happens. I'm not red in the slightest. In fact, I'm so pale my skin could be translucent. My hair is so black it would never hold red dye. My eyes are so green that red would turn me into Christmas. Sometimes, I lean in close to the mirror to try and find something red about me. Some semblance of my name. Because everyone has an emotional connection to their name, right? Everyone has something that makes their name a part of who they are. I don't. I never have. But I look for it, sometimes, I look for the parts of me that are Red. I always find none. as if the name isn't mine at all.

(According to LaDasha, later, she said I was covered in blood. I don't remember that part of the story and I don't remember how I would have gotten covered in blood in the first place. But she swears by that. John, as always, just grunts in agreement.)

I have no formal ID. I could never get a license because I have no birth certificate. I couldn't get a tax write off because I'm not registered as a citizen. I don't have a social security number. I don't have a last name. I'm a Jane Doe. I simply don't exist. I'm not sure why I never was identified, why my younger self didn't know her own name or her telephone number or her parents or even where she lived. I simply adopted the form and abilities of a living ghost.

(I went to the airport once and couldn't be identified in any of the international databases. They tried to take my fingerprint and couldn't identify a match. When John learned that, we left and refused to give them our names. It's not like it really mattered. I have no last name, so they couldn't have even registered me anywhere.)

LaDasha is much the same way as me. She came from Jamaica, took classes and got her GED, and then dropped off the radar. Her only identification is her passport, which she refuses to get renewed for fear they would deport her. John doesn't push it. I think he likes the fact that she has no real past. I think he likes the fact that both of us are no ones. I'm sure he has other girls besides the ones I know of; Johnny has many as far as I can tell, ones on the side, but I know the two of us are the only real ones. We cannot be identified. We're safe for him. And that brings us into his reality.

(LaDasha and John are married only in spirit. They foraged their marriage certificate instead of getting it done by law.)

Education is one of John's other priorities as far as who he has around him. He has a load of informers, information gathers, sellers, but the only buyers he allows are those that he knows are educated. LaDasha finished high school. So did Taffy and Nate. Remy even went to college. I've been homeschool since before I can remember. And we are the only ones who have ever bought for John. (John doesn't want idiots handling his money because John isn't an idiot. He went to four years of college and has a master's degree in finance. He just prefers to live this way. But I always thought something happened that we don't know about. Something that changed him forever. But we will never know what that is because John doesn't do communication unless it's on his own terms.)

I've been homeschooled for five years now, since I came to John. Every day I sit in the cloudy kitchen, as the incense and tobacco steam out and become fog, at the metal table and work through text book after text book. I'm not sure where these books even came from. We have a wall of stalked, thick volumes nicknamed 'Reds wall' where John is constantly shifting new books into commission and old books to buyers on the internet. I have college text books, high school, middle school, physics and biology and chemistry, language and literature and French and Latin. I speak almost fluent Spanish and Japanese. I have more math knowledge than I know what to rightfully do with; I've read Shakespeare and studied mechanics at the same time, as well as spelling, grammar, anything that shows itself on my wall.

I've wondered often why I need to know all these things if all I do is give and take money, give and take drugs. I have no use for it. Beyond a cigarette, I've never smoked anything. John doesn't like it. He likes a clear head, an open conscience. And this all plays into that, somehow. Somehow, knowing about engineering and chemistry is important to his '_operation_'.

That word gives me the chills.

"Come, Red," LaDasha says, holding a flashcard between two red manicured nails. "'Tell me dat number there."

The flashcard is part of a geometric series. The point is that I'm not allowed to do any math outside my head, not by calculator or any other source. (But I count on my fingers under the table.)

I focus my eyes on the rest of the kitchen. LaDasha is more a hippy than anyone I've ever meet. Beads and silks hang from the ceiling. Leather pouches full of special stones and baskets full of lemons grace the counter top. We tidied the walls with splatter paint a few years ago, so there are hand prints and swirls in every color under the sun, rainbows across the walls, not melted away yet form the store fumes. The store front is through a door next to the stairs, which faces the street with closed off windows. (It smells like sorrow.)

"39," I answer.

"Good enough for de time bein," LaDasha says.

She isn't as strict as John is. When it's John sitting here with me at this metal table, flash cards laid out over the checkered top, he's always making me get the exact number. LaDasha is more lenient. In more things than just this one. (But I don't like to think about that.)

My reflection in the glittering mirrors decorating the walls shows the purple bruise that has bloomed on my cheek. It's been a long time since I've had such a bad one that wasn't caused by myself. I try not to look in the mirror. I focus on my school work. I focus on everything but what's staring back at me in reflective surfaces. And I smile. Even if that smile pulls against my flesh and makes the bruise seeming to burn.

(But optimism is my only option.)

"LaDasha!" Taffy sticks her head into the room from the door to the living room, the sound of jingling following her into the room, "some guy is asking for you in the front."

"Watch de girl," LaDasha tells her.

I feel too old to have to be watched. Granted, I don't know my age for sure. But I've been here for a long time. Five years or so. And I think that I can watch myself and I think that I can find the red helmet man because I think I have learned more than anyone has given my credit for learning. I think that in the end I have grown up around these people, and if they cannot believe in my own capabilities then it's hard for me to believe in myself. Honestly, there is very few times in my life I have been alone, yet even surrounded by people I feel as though no one else is there with me. the only point in them watching me now is to make sure I cannot truly find the red helmet man.

(I have to find him because I have a lot to prove. I'm more fearful of John than I am of the man who murdered Vet. And yet I'm fearful of him too, more than I would admit even to myself. Even to LaDasha. Because some secrets are meant to be kept.)

"So kid," Taffy sits down heavily in the seat across from me. Taffy is beautiful, there's not questioning that. She grew up on the streets, long brown hair with dark eyes and more piercings than I can even count, she has the streets within her and the streets around her. everything she does is somehow revolved around her time as a homeless person in her youth, her world is the store and her universe is the disgusting streets of Gotham. "What're you doing?"

"What do I always do?"

"Sit around and do nothing," Taffy says. She leans back and lights a cigarette.

"That pretty much sums it up."

"Heard you made a pretty good transaction last night though," she says, scratching at her new bellybutton ring, "you've become a little pro. Don't get cocky though, papa Bat is back, so you wouldn't be going on again until he leaves."

"What do you know about the Batman?"

She snorts, "Just about as much as everyone else."

I watch my reflection again. Batman is the enigma of the entire city; no one knows who he is or where he came from. He just showed up one day, making a pain for people who aren't careful enough to close their windows at night. "So you don't know anything about him? What's the word on the street about him?"

"And why the hell, do you need to know?" she flicks her ashes. "I mean, he's a Bat. He comes out in the dark and haunts little children's dream. I've heard he's kinda kinky though, you know, like he takes down people like that."

"That's unpleasant," I tell her.

"No shit," she says, "But if it will make you happy, kid, I'll tell you." She takes a drag. Taffy is the most laid back of the girls, I'm not sure what she does exactly but John is always mad at her for smoking something or another. She's the only one brave enough to smoke anything while John is around, who while he isn't, or maybe she just parties to hard. Whatever it is, she's the freest of us. She would know about rebellion more than anyone. (The only difference is that she walks the thin line between being on John's bad list and being his favorite person because she always wins trust with other sellers. That's what gives Taffy her edge), "Last night he did some crazy shit, stopped that riot downtown, him and the Birds. I think they're still there, trying to clean up the mess."

"Did they get Black Mask?"

"To hell if I know, why do you even need to know anyway?"

"John said that if I could find the man in the red helmet, er, mask, then I could know more about the things we do. As an organization."

(A part of me keeps saying 'he is using you, he is using us all' but I have known John for so long. I have known him for so long and I cannot move past this. I cannot move past him. He is holding me by the chin and will not let me go. He holds me in place next to him and yanks me back every time I start to stray. And animal on a leash. His animal on a leash.)

She stares at me. I'm not sure what she is thinking, her many lip rings are flipping upwards into a frown. (In the end she is on a leash too, she is an animal with piercings and tattoos, set up in a glass case for John to stare at.) She puts her cigarette out in the ash tray. "He seriously said that?"

"Yeah," and I feel wrong saying that. Shouldn't I feel good about it? Trusted? Shouldn't I be happy that I have something to prove my worth? There's no reason for me to be living if I cannot be useful to him. there's no reason for me to feel wrong when I am on the track to being one of the trusted girls. one of his girls who he uses, "But I don't even know where to start. When I meet him last night-"

"You meet him last night?" she sits forward and gives me her full attention like she has never given me any time before, "you met the Batman?"

"No, no I meet the man in the red mask, the helmet."

"The one that's been killing everyone?"

"Yeah," I answer her, "You know, the one that has everyone so freaked out."

"What the hell? You meet him and you survived? No one ever survives, that's why no one ever knows anything about him!" she throws herself back in her chair, making it squeal. Somewhere in the distance, fire alarms go off. "Damn kid. Look, you know you'll never find out who this guy is, right? He's a murderer, for crying out loud."

"But I have to! It's like a test. To graduate to the next level. I want to be more myself."

(I'm determined but I'm afraid. Already the memories of last night are fading to wherever I store the bad things in my life. Already the image of Vet crumpled and bleeding is drifting to a place where I cannot reach it. I am being restored in the only way I know how. But the fear is still there. I can ignore bruises all day, but the fear will prevail. I just wouldn't remember what I'm afraid of.)

"You are yourself, who else can you be?"

"A person who can be trusted," I tell her, but she has always been trusted. There was a time when she ran most street transactions, even buying, when we were of a smaller scale. But now she is at the top of her game, a strong and beautiful woman with piercings, constantly changing, so that she could be a different woman with each change. Just like John likes it. "Like you. And Nate and LaDasha and Remy. I'm ready to be a real person."

"You are a real person," Taffy says, "but you're also a dumb kid."

"I'm not dumb," I tell her, pushing the text book towards her, "I know a good bit more than the average person."

(I want to be a real person. To John. I want to be a real person so that I can raise to Taffy's level. So that every time I speak John will not shake me. So that he will trust me with knowing anything at all. Even if it cost me something that I will never get back. My ignorance. My ignorance to John. To what is really happening here. What I really fight for.)

"Fine then," Taffy puts out her hands up and looks over at the kitchen door, as if checking to see if LaDasha will come wafting in, clear as day, "Jesus, LaDasha is going to commit murder to know you're thinking this. Look," she lights another cigarette. she has sixteen piercings just on her face and she has an ability to blow out smoke form a hole in her lip. it leaks out now through her skin as she breathes. "if you want to catch the cat you need to go where cats go."

"I need to be a murderer?"

"Hell no, I said _where_ the cats go, not _what_ the cats do, you idiot." She points towards the cabinets, but I think she really means to point out towards the city. "You have to go where the cats go if you want to prowl with the big boys. It's there that you'll find out who he is. Hell, maybe you'll find out who Batman is. Wouldn't that be a doozy?"

"I don't need your sarcasm," I tell her, standing and closing the book. I don't have the mind to finish my lesion, so I throw the flashcards into the drawer and move towards the door.

(I see a glint of metal, bright against the rest of the junk in the drawer. I chose to ignore it. There are better things to worry about.)

"Really though," Taffy says, "When we need to make connections that's what I do. I go where the cats go."

I leave through the swinging door and head down the hallway towards the living room. The door to the shop is next to the door to the stairs, and I take it and enter the thick smog of the store front. Rows and rows of incent, herbs, skulls, wind chimes, thick silk drapes and masks from Jamaica and clay figurines of demons. They aren't really demons. They are supposed to be some kind of gods crafted from the earth. I see them as demonic. I can feel their glare as I move around the store (LaDasha refuses to get rid of them. 'They help me sleep at night' she says.)

"I'm heading out," I tell LaDasha, tossed so that she has no way of saying no. she is with a customer at the crystal ball, an area in the back corner with drapes all black and a table with tarot cards all set out. All kind of Jamaican voodoo items are laid out over the area, charms, LaDasha calls them.

LaDasha glances up at me over the cards, narrowing her eyes. Her hoop earrings are so large they could have encompassed her face, scarves and skirts of all different colors. She glares, lightly, over her very dark blue eye shadow. I don't stay to see any more.

I stand outside the shop, watching up and down the torn concrete road. To catch a cat, I have to go where the cats go. The first question that needs answering: where do the cats go?

…

There is an apple seller on 34th street. The towering glass buildings are meant to impress foreigners as they visit the city, four streets that encompass the only beauty Gotham has to offer. But this veneer is all a façade. Behind those buildings are soup kitchens, and in those soup kitchens are people who live on these streets, starving. While there are people in these buildings that live and breathe money. Gold. Silver. Riches beyond belief.

And they let these people starve. They let _his_ people starve.

There is an apple seller on 34Th street. He lays behind his stall dead.

Everyone walks by. No one takes the time to notice.

They also don't take the time to notice the store across the street. A clothing store, high end, expensive. The bitches there are the ones who hold themselves above _him_. Always above _him_. And above the apple seller. And above every damned person in this city. They think the world revolves around them. They think that there are no people below them, no people who need help. But they will need the help soon. And _he_ wants to know how they feel when no one will come to give it to them. That's how it feels to starve without food.

Everyone fails to notice the store across the street. They continue like they always do.

They also fail to see the bomb left under one of the stores racks.

….

North Side is empty. Deadly empty. It's been a long time since there have been no cars on this road, since there have been no smokers outside the record shop. The streets are filthy, covered with newspapers, bottles, broken glass and shells from bullets. I've never seen so much crap on the streets with no one there to clean it up. With no cops to investigate. It's a ghost town, literally. And not even the ghosts will come out to play.

I don't see the man in the red helmet or Batman, or any of his Birds or his Robin. All I see are signs of death. Blood stains on the floor, bullets in the walls of the structures. I happen to know the man who owns the coffee shop, now torn apart from the inside like a tornado went tumbling through. Everything that lived here, even the rats, has fled. I wonder what kind of riot it was. I suppose that was a bit of information that I should have figured out beforehand.

I move into the alley way besides me. I have no idea where else to even start. I could go through all the clues left by the riot, but it seems not even the local cockroaches want to do that. And it would only hurt me, get me discovered, if the police happen to be strolling by when I am shuffling through the debris. (But why aren't the police here? Where are they? What could be more important than figuring out what happened here, when it caused an entire city to flip over sideways? When the morning paper blowing across the cement has it as the front page story?)

Lightning flashes across the sky. Where it was clear last night, the clouds have rolled in and caused the humidity to hang with the thick smog of dust. It's heavy, weighing you down, making everything sticky and clammy to the touch. The brick of the buildings looks red as blood, black in places where the mold is growing too heavily. Behind all these buildings are a group of soup kitchens, carved into the backs of tall, glass clad buildings. (I've been to those soup kitchens before, when the going was rough, and John was elsewhere with his other girls. LaDasha and Nate and Taffy and Remy. I've eaten there with people who smelled like dumpster, and I identified with them only as far as I could identify with myself. Because in the end, we are all nobodies with no names and no identity in a world that is too big to understand us all.)

I move across the intersection, down both ways are the soup kitchens, and head to the cusp of 34th street. North side has city center in it, the hub of business and communication. It's a bee hive, a long four blocks of beautiful architecture designed to cover up what the city is really like. It vibrates, breathing as if alive, ready to burst form the seams with commerce and trade. Very few times have I ever come around to this street, I have obvious signs of street kid in me and there is no room for dirtiness in such a place. But no one has ever kicked me out. They have just stared at me, as if surprised I even came.

There is a stall that catches my eye. It's kept clean, of course, because it would have been dismantled and taken away if not. An apple stand, all of them bright red and gleaming in the half light as a flash of lightning ripples across the sky. The wind is blowing from the port, mixing salt with the smell of smoke from the factories across the water in Bludhaven, and that wind causes the closed sheets over the stall poles to slap heavily against the glass of the window behind.

_-Slap- _the sound is wet; I reach forward and take the thick fabric in my hands. The woven fabrics, like potato sacks, are damp enough to have been wet for a while. But it hasn't rained in a long time, a few days is a long time to not rain in Gotham, _-slap-,_ _-slap-, _the fabrics slam against the poles. (It sounds like John's hand did across my cheek.)

I move across the apple stand. The apples are all perfectly round and red. I wouldn't expect the apples to be perfect because this guy who works here is supposed to be a man who lived on the street. Where would a man who lived on the street get good looking apples? They aren't plastic, but why would they be? So how did a man who lives on the street get good looking apples, selling them for ten cents on the street, when he could be charging ten times more compared to the quality of those that they sell in the stores. (The street kid inside me asks myself that because if I were him getting a profit would be easy. It would be easy to sell apples. But he isn't making any money. So how can he actually get the apples in the first place? But the other part of me, the one that sleeps in my room every night next to the room that LaDasha and John sleep in, is so scared to breath. And that seems natural.)

Through the flapping fabrics I see the blood pooling across the grey. I move into the little room created by the stall, thrown into a dark kind of shadow, where the old man who owned the stall is laid across the ground. He could be sleeping. Sleeping eternally in a puddle of liquids. His aged, wrinkled skin looks like tanned leather, his eyes like glass, so that he could well be a doll or a taxidermy. (That's what I tell myself. Because a part of me is screaming and the street kid is telling him how stupid all these people are, that they walk by without noticing this man dead in his own stall.)

The rest of the stall is clean besides a few fast-food wrappers and some poker cards. The stool is still upright, as if someone had been sitting in it just a few minutes ago, and gracing that wooden surface is a mask. It's a silver metal mask, full faced, and I pull the sleeves of my jacket down and pick it up. It's cold, heavy, and the underside is just as smooth and unmarked as the front. (A part of me screams to take it. A part of me screams to let it go.)

Under that mask is an old, faded driver's license of a man. The man could have been a younger version of the apple seller. I reach forward, my fingertips touching the edge of the laminated card-

-I see black eyes staring at me from between the fluttering fabrics. Thunder booms somewhere in the distance, and I rip forward through the stand, crashing through the stands plywood sides and tumbling down onto the cement, my hand gripping a hard red apple, flying down the alleyway towards the dark figure running away from me towards the soup kitchens-

…

-Jenifer Ann Keller drops a hanger onto the polished floors. She has been working at Cattie's Clothes for three months now and hasn't gotten any better since the first day she has walked into this store. Her managers have been driving her up the wall for two weeks about her lack of progress and her back is against the wall. She has a kid to feed, you know, she has a life, and for some reason she can't get understand how to put a fucking shirt on a hanger in order to protect that life.

She bends down and picks it up, happening to glance in front of her. A good sized black brief case is sitting primly under the rack, shining purple with the stores lighting. "What the hell, are people leaving shit now?" she asks herself as she pulls the thing forward, taking hold of the latches and throwing it open.

On the clock, the red letters read 00:05.

For the first time since her son was born, Jenifer Ann Keller prays to God.

…..

_-Boom!-_

The world vibrates, changes, shifts as I am flown forwards. For a minute I have the sensation of flying, drifting through the air, everything around me a black and grey blur, until I hit the ground hard, rolling, a kaleidoscope of colors slashing across my eye lids. The only thing I can do is hold my breath. The only thing I can do is pull my arms together at my chest, watching as the world passes by, as I feel my skin tear on the cement under me, as I hear nothing all at once-

-the world is silent but for a strange ringing in my ear. Clouds and clouds of smoke waft past my body, impenetrable by any sort of noise. Bodies rush by, flailing their limbs, fish out of water in a tormented sea. (They remind me of myself. They remind me of all Johnny's girls.) Fleeing, they run from the source of the clouds, they take off down the street. I watch their feet slap the ground, but I hear no noise to accompany their haste. I hear no noise within myself. everything is only a ringing, a buzzing, bees buzzing within me.

I try to lift myself up off the pavement, but there is glass under my palm and it hurts digging into my skin. My whole left arm is covered with a blotchy, sticky red. I wonder if a stranger will walk by and look at me and think I'm a taxidermy. I wonder if they will see my death as it is, and not as I do, an out of body experience.

But I stand (shaking, trembling, the mask and the driver's license and the apple still clutched to my chest) and watch as the billowing smoke clouds are broken apart by the rain. Fat, ugly raindrops touch the scattered debris and glass. Raining, raining, down on the world, down on the scene across form me, and the bodies that liter the floor in front of the charred form that was once a clothing shop.

The ringing in my ears is persistent and no matter how much I will it away it will not go. I wheel around and try to look for the man who I was chasing into the alley way, finding the broken and crumpled form not two feet from me, curled into a limp ball of ragged sweats. Through the ringing I can hear the screaming of sirens. Slowly, as I watch the man stirring as if he had just woken up, I begin to hear again. And the screeching of the world around me is worse than the silence. (I always preferred the silence. I always preferred that to constant, useless noise.)

I struggle over the man, and- _-crack!-_

-I wasn't expecting him to hit me and I stumble back across the debris now littering the floor, the glass cutting deep into my palms as I scramble to catch him before he bolts off in the other direction. We fumble in the ruckus for a moment until I get the upper hand, sitting myself down on him, lifting my hand above my head (trying to look threatening) as a warning.

(As before, I feel calm. The adrenaline has coursed through my veins and I feel like a new woman. Like I could do anything. But from the pooling of my own blood, I cannot.)

"Who are you?" I demand. The raised arm is dripping blood onto my cheek, and I glance slightly back to see myself having raised the apple instead of a gun or a knife or a switchblade, as if I'm ready at any point to beat his head into the ground until the apples skin breaks.

"What da hell? What da hell? You just blew up a building?"

(Eyes like a deer's, wide and frightened and blood shot and trying to mask that with the bright lights of the truck screaming towards it. The man is a deer. I am a truck. He is the prey and I am the predator. John told me that we have an influence over people. I'm here now, and I don't think I like it.)

"What are you talking about? I didn't blow anything up!"

"You was right there!" he shouts, his hand pointing down towards where the stunned crowd has gathered around the bomb sight, staring with mouths open at the chaos. "You was right there with a dead guy!"

"I found him! And why were you there? Why were you staring at me?"

"Man, he was dead!" the man screeches, "You don't just ignore dead guys!"

(He would be surprised how many people do.)

A powdery substance is spilling out from his jacket pocket. He fumbles, trying to hide it with his elbow, but I recognize the smell anywhere. Venom. The stuff isn't like Acid or Crack or Weed, the stuff messes with you big time, like Meth messes with its victims, but instead of making you slowly go crazy Venom makes you permanently and extremely hallucinate. It's dangerous stuff, not even most street sellers will risk using Venom. (Because most sellers of Venom end up dead, by themselves or by another person who is hooked on the stuff. It's not unusual and it's not underground. It's just a fact of life.)

"You're a seller," the man immediately freezes, his doe eyes shifting back and forth, but no one will come to his rescue. And I know of only one man lately who is willing to distribute Venom. "You work for Galante, don't you?"

"Aw, hell no!" he leans in close so that I can smell the drugs on his tongue, "Do you know what people'll think if you go sayin shit like that?"

"Are you kidding me? You just accused me of blowing up a building!"

"Well someone did it!"

"Look," I tell him, trying to sound threatening. With an apple in my hand. (But I know John Wilder. I live with him. I've done transactions with him. I know how to scare people because I'm often scared myself.) "I'm not stupid. I know that Galante is one of the very few people who actually sells that shit, and if you're not selling than you're buying. Since I happen to know that lot in your pocket is worth well over a thousand dollars, we're not talking about a little bought on the side."

"Aw shit," the man murmurs, "Are you a cop?"

(Lying is the best way for a Gotham citizen to get through life. This city is, after all, built on lies and deceit. What's one white lie with all the rest of them?) "As good as."

"Look, man," his eyes dart again, back and forth. Looking for something. But no one is here. He's fidgeting. scratching at his arms and elbows. Behind us are sirens, getting louder and louder, but I ignore them. The sound of the man's voice goes up an octave, high pitched, squealing. "He said it would be fine…just not to the kids, man, not to the kids. He said I was fine!"

"Who said? Galante?"

The man slams his head back against the pavement with a _–crack-_ and I find myself holding onto his head, my apple dropped and forgotten, the mask and license gone somewhere, as I try to keep this man from beating his head against the cement. Brown blood goes everywhere. (It clouts on my hands, my arms, my chest, my legs, my feet, between my toes, into my skin cells. Gotham is a dirty city. It's full of secrets. It's full of men who shot at the sky in churches. It's full of men who beat their heads against the pavement because they are inhaling drugs.) and I grab his head, trying to twine my hands into his wiry hair, but the his strength is fantastic, his insanity runs deep, so that staring into his eyes is becoming difficult because of the deranged look settled there. he knows exactly what he is doing. he wants to do it.

He stops all at once, my hands deep in his skull. He smiles, to himself, as if laughing at some joke that I have not heard.

"You did buy didn't you?" I want to slip my jacket off and cover his skull with it so he will not bleed. But I am tied up here and cannot find the strength to move so I can get the jacket off. "How much, how much did you take?"

"Did I imagine that? The bomb?"

"Hey, kids!"

"No, no that all happened. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"

"The world…is so big," he murmurs, "so big…you could get lost..."

Someone is leaning down next to me. I can smell the rough collogue, see the brown stubble, see the dull edge of a gun in its hoister. The police man leaning down next to us is talking, but I cannot make out the words. The ringing has come back. (Ringing and ringing and ringing) The man under me is still. Behind us, emergency vehicles are on the scene, and the police are swarming like flies, and I see the flare of a black cape in the wreckage of the blast, mounting the building as it crumples down on itself and sends another wave of clouds into the already smoggy Gotham air.(I remove my hands from the man's body. I want him to know I didn't do it. But he is saying things kindly. He says '…let us take care of the boy's life form here, honey.' I wonder if he knows what went on. I wonder if he thinks I'm helping him. I wonder if I really was or not.)

My bloody hands grab the mask and the license and reach for the apple-but before I can get to it a hand comes out and grabs it, clad in black. A glove, gracefully pulled up over strong arms, up and up until it is connected to the rest of the red and yellow suit. Robin hands me back my apple (Bruised and broken and covered with soot so that the shiny red surface has dulled down to an unsightly brown) I chose to turn and run instead of thanking him. I chose to turn and run instead of listening to the screeching of sirens, into the smoggy rain that is fueled by the humidity.

…

"Someone's distributing Venom," I say, "Lots of it."

John looks up at me. His eyes no longer hold the anger that they did last night, but they hold something else. Something cold enough to be cruel and warm enough to be caring. But there is no middle ground with John. What was will never be. (John is a very good liar) and I have to prove myself again, I'm stuck in a position where not doing so will cost me more than it will help. Because after all, I must build up my empire before I can sit in the seat of the empress.

"You sure?"

"Positive," I tell him, "I…there was a guy that I meet today. He had more than a few doses of the stuff in his jacket pocket. He was high when I got to him."

"He wasn't selling?"

"No," I think back on it more rationally now. The world has calmed since I fled the scene of the crime. The world has calmed and shifted into a different direction. I think more clearly. I recognize the signs now more than I did before. the rigidness, running instead of facing me, the dazed look, the fidgeting, the bloodshot eyes that dart back and forth in his sockets. (I'm not a perfect person. I make mistakes. but I don't know if this one cost the man his life.) "He wasn't brave enough. He ran from danger."

John hums under his breath.

His eyes are laying on the TV before us, blurting out some news story. Flashes of the explosion, as caught by the camera of the store across from Cattie's Closet, dart across the screen more violently than the lightning in the sky now, as the rain falls and falls. The reporter woman says to the camera '…explosion was caused by a remote detonator in a briefcase, thought to be activated a few blocks from the scene of the crime. Responders were unable to save most of the victims, taking more than ten minutes for first responders to arrive due to a hold up with police over a suspect believed to be responsible for the riots that happened yesterday…' while behind her the smoke raises even in the rain as men in neon yellow work uniforms shift through piles and piles of debris.

(First responders came too late. Was it because no one called? Was it because the police were busy with something else? Was it because the Batman wasn't there to save us, like he always is? Are the people getting to use to Batman's omnipresent capabilities?)

China breaks across the floor and LaDasha screams. I feel her grab onto my shoulders, her shrill voice raising as she inspects my arms, 'What did ya do? What did ya do?" questioning over and over again. But John only sits there, watching the TV in the reflected light of the candles. He doesn't look over as LaDasha drags me towards the stairs, up to the bathroom, but glares at the TV screen as if it will give him the answers that he seeks.

(I wanted his attention. I have things of importance to tell him now. I didn't hide what had happened, I only censored it. this wasn't like Vet's murder. I told him, I didn't fight back. yet he gave me more time of day when I rebelled. I think about Taffy and how she always goes against what John wants her to. is this how she feels? does she feel as if she's walking a thin line between what john wants and what he will acknowledge? Or perhaps John is just to deep in thought, to deeply absorbed in the happenings around him to notice what I do. there is a plan forming in his mind, it doesn't take a genius to know that. the real question is this: What is John planning this time?)

"Will he go after Galante?"

"Do't min John. Do't min."

"But will he?"

"Listen ta me," LaDasha says, wheeling me around to face her as she carefully pulls off my jacket and shirt to expose the bleeding fissures in my arm. we are in the nasty, tile covered bathroom on the second floor, the taps running heavily discolored water against the sounds of the storm. Outside the window, lightning flashes and thunder crashes, causing the lights to flicker over our heads. "John will do anythin ta protect dis family."

(What family? this isn't a family. it's a random collection of misfits that happen to live in the same city, who happen to have been talked into getting together under one roof and under one purpose. And yet they are the only family that I remember. The only ones that I've ever come to know. But is this a family? Sometimes I second guess myself.)

"What is it he's really protecting?"

LaDasha doesn't answer. But I think we both already know.

Outside the window, the lightning flashes angrily across the sky. And when I look closely, I can see the bat symbol glaring dimly there, ready to call the heroes into action. and we sit in the grimy bathroom on the second floor of a shop that sells legal drugs, cleaning blood off the floor.


End file.
